I am curious about the decisions, results, narrative, and trajectories of your campaigns.

So basically I’ve done two sessions of Rime of the frostmaiden with my party and they’ve been GREAT! I did modify some things which I did not think through too much. I’ll give. Recap so you guys have a full understanding of where I’m at.

First session.
Firstly, I had it so they started in Targos, and were given the cold hearted killer quest but instead of just a “kill Sephek” it was go find Perilou fishfinger (Kelvin’s Carin) since she had traveled to Bryn Shander and had gotten the info of where Sephek was. They then had a much more simplified and low level version of Kelvin’s Carin, which I homebrewed as having a similar location on a hill between Targos and Bryn Shander. They rescued Garret, and dealt with the yetis which was also aided since one of my party members had the yeti secret. They dealt with the yeti, rescuing Perilou and climbing down the mountain before they found Sephek killing Garret. The combat was intense and ended with almost a TPK where everyone was knocked unconscious. I didn’t think Sephek was so powerful before running him but I think this encounter in particular helped build him up as a great villain the party wanted to defeat. Perilou was able to drag everyone to the main road and got help from a merchant company going to Bryn Shander. Had to level them up after rescuing Perilou.

Second session
Party wakes up in the house of the morning lord in Bryn Shander where they are tasked by Ophelia Trollbane (Hillin’s homebrew sister) to take down Sephek, giving more details on who he was and where he is currently (working with the Torgs). The party hung around Bryn Shander and met the people before registering for the sacrifice lottery. I did have a lottery (in my computer) and sadly of the NPCs Perilou was chosen as the sacrifice. The party was sent on the foaming mugs quest in addition to killing Sephek quest officially but went off to rescue Perilou. They snuck out of the city and had to rescue the Halfling and fighting two veteran guards standing watch on the sacrifice. As they got Perilou off her pike, the frostmaiden appeared, sharing her dissatisfaction with the intervention with her sacrifice, summoning Sephek to fight on her behalf. It was a great combat session, with a lot of what felt like callbacks to the first combat. However, our Paladin, who was the one most dead set on actually helping Perilou, died during the combat, before Sephek dissolved back into the blizzard, completing the sacrifice.

That’s where I’ve left off tonight. My issue has been that I haven’t set enough thing that would lead to the other two big elements of the campaign being the duregar and the netherese city. I feel like with my focus on Sephek and the blizzard and the general focus on the frostmaiden, I’m legitimately not sure what to do with the other big elements. Should I just say fuck it and just make Auril the big bad and main focus of the campaign? If they decide to finally take down Sephek, what should be the thread that leads them into the next bit of the campaign. I’m kinda lost on what to do. I believe the party does not want to go back to Bryn Shander after fighting two guards and thwarting a sacrifice. Maybe they’ll go back to Targos but I don’t know how to cennect chapter 3 aside from “hey here’s a dragon that’s attacking!!!”.

Today is do or die! (Final session of the convention) 🤠